Martin Galway
1966 
Belfast [United Kingdom]
He is one of the most famous and prestigious composers of music for the Commodore 64's SID sound chip.
His best-known works include Arkanoid, Wizball, and Green Beret, as well as numerous melodies used during game loading, such as those developed by Ocean Software.
He began writing games and music for the BBC Micro computer in his spare time when he was 17, with his high school friends.
His former high school computer teacher, Peter Davidson, who had left school to work for the publisher of The Micro User magazine, hired them to produce the music for the game Atomic Protector (an unlicensed copy of Pac-Man) during the holidays.
Over the following years, he continued writing music for the BBC Micro, and his work was appreciated by Ocean, who provided him with a Commodore 64 to compose their games.
During the 1980s, he composed music for many of the most popular Commodore 64 games, becoming one of the most highly regarded composers for the SID sound chip, thanks to his superb, dizzying compositions and his extensive use of the SID sound chip's modulation capabilities.
Among the melodies most remembered by Commodore 64 users are the melodies from the games Green Beret and Yie Ar Kung-Fu.
Contemporary computing celebrities to Martin Galway
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Hillman Curtis
1961
San Diego [USA]
† 2012
He stood out as a web designer and a pioneer in the use of Macromedia Flash Player, which for many years was an intrinsic part of the most advanced web pages.
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Jeff Minter
1962
Reading [United Kingdom]
Jeff Minter (often called Yak) is an English video game designer and programmer, founder of the software company Llamasoft, and has created dozens of games throughout his career, which began in 1981 with games for the ZX80.
Minter's games are shoot 'em ups that contain references in the title or gameplay that demonstrate his fondness for ruminants (llamas, sheep, camels, etc.).
Many of his programs also contain psychedelic elements, as in some of the early "light synthesizer" programs, such as Trip-a-Tron.
Minter's works include the music visualization program Neon (2004), integrated into the Xbox 360 console, and the video games Gridrunner, Attack of the Mutant Camels, Tempest 2000, and Polybius. -
Kevin Mitnick
1963
Van Nuys [USA]
The most famous hacker of all time.
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Jony Ive
1967
London [United Kingdom]
The English industrial designer was hired by Apple to design its new laptop in September 1992, following Steve Jobs' return to the company.
He was responsible for the design of the iMac, Power Mac G4 Cube, iPod, iPhone, iPad, MacBook, and parts of the iOS user interface. -
Linus Torvalds
1969
Helsinki [Finland]
He is a Finnish software engineer, pioneer programmer and creator of the Linux Kernel in 1991.
